Atletico knock out Chelsea to set up Madrid derby in UCL Final

For the first time in UEFA Champions League history, two teams from the same city will face off in the final.

On Wednesday afternoon in London, Atletico Madrid put in a complete performance with a 3-1 victory vs. Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, as goals from Adrian, Diego Costa, and Arda Turan lead Atleti to the Champions League final. Atletico will meet rival Real Madrid in the final on May 24 at the Estadio Da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal.

The final pairing is the second year in a row that two teams from the same nation will contend for European glory.

Carrying a 0-0 scoreline to England from the second leg, Chelsea were the first to get on the board to keep their fan’s European hopes alive.

In the 36th minute, Willian found Cesar Azpilicueta on the right wing and his low cross darted towards the feet of former Atletico star Fernando Torres. Torres whipped his right foot across the ball and thanks to a slight deflection, scored the game’s opening goal.

Atletico needed only eight minutes to respond, though. In the 44th minute, former Chelsea midfielder Tiago sent a long ball to the right wing over to Juanfran. His cross into the middle didn’t meet with anyone but on the half-volley, Adrian fired it home off the ground and into the top corner to put Atletico level on goals and ahead on away goals.

In the second half, Atletico stepped up the pace and tempo of the game and were rewarded in the 59th minute when Chelsea substitute Samuel Eto’o tripped Costa in the box, giving Atletico a penalty kick. Though he was yellow carded for apparent time wasting, Costa put his boot through the ball and powered Atletico into the lead in the 61st minute.

Turan gave the visitors their two-goal cushion in the 72nd minute when a header by the Turkish international bounced back into the middle of the box off the post. Turan was the only player to keep on running and met the ball when it hit the ground and side-footed home to the elation of the visiting fans and head coach Diego Simeone.

The victory sets up what will be the fifth meeting this season between the Madrid sides, after meeting twice in La Liga and twice in the Copa Del Rey.

Gus Johnson better not be the announcer for the final. It is painful how little he knows about the sport itself and his role during the games. At least FOX give us the option to listen to crowd noise only like was done for the BCS title game.

This result is no surprise, Chelsea is not a team they are just a collection of overpaid (admittedly very talented) prima donnas, managed by the world’s greatest prima donna. Honestly I’m happy they have been humbled, they needed it and hopefully it will do them good.

It’s good to see an All Spanish Final so we can once and for all put to rest which league is the best. Before the argument has always been that La Liga is a two team league. Not the case this year and throw in Sevilla and Valencia in the Europa League semi-finals it has been an impressive performance by La Liga. Despite losing so many players to other leagues the last two years (Negredo, Ozil, Navas, Soldado, Thiago, Javi Martinez, Llorente, Higuain, Carvalho, Medel, Canas, Michu, Falcao) the list is pretty long and that is just the last two years go back further and you can include Silva, Mata, Cazorla, De Gea. Spanish clubs have shown an incredible ability to scout, find and develop players. Oh and the national team has won three major trophies in a row. Can any argument really be made as to another league being better.

Yawn. Go be a TV pundit. Does anybody care what league is “the best”? Does it matter? At all? Last year Real and Barca got utterly clowned by German teams… How do we interpret that then? Stop…. just enjoy soccer…. why do you have to go picking fights with a bunch of people who don’t have any reason to argue?

The English soccer bias can get pretty frustrating. Many of the English commentators seem to get off on belittling Spanish (and Italian) soccer and seem intent on just focusing on the diving and antics of some players. This Champions League Fox routinely banished Spanish teams to the dreaded non-HD Fox Sports 2, assuming they showed the games at all. My cable company took a year to offer BeIn, but had NBCSN right away. Kind of difficult to “just enjoy soccer” when the best League and teams are not featured and instead we get the anti-soccer of Chelsea and the soap opera drama of Man U shoved down our throats all season long.

This I can agree with. The comparisons regarding “strongest league” almost always come with the assumption that England is a “big dog” in the conversation. It has rarely been true in the Champions League era, other than a 5 or so year stretch following unlikely Liverpool’s win in 2005, during which English teams did regularly filll out the latter rounds.

I’ve been watching the CL since about ’95, and for most of that the period up until Liverpool’s unlikely 2005 win, it was quite rare for English teams to get anywhere near the final, other than ManU’s ’99 win and the Leeds team that somehow reached the semi-finals on the back of Lee Friggin Bowyer . Frankly, ESPN would usually show a RM or Milan Roma or Dortmund game before an English team during that time.

So I get the anger. But English games come with English language feeds and that’s an easy thing to sell, particularly here in the US where most all soccer programming has to pass the often-irrelevant test of “will this help sell soccer to the average sports fan?” test in order to get meaningful funding and high production value. And in fairness, English games (even without commentary) do communicate the atmosphere of top tier soccer better than anything through the television.

Good news is La Liga has the godlike Ray Hudson, and he definitely agrees w you.